Bernie Sanders Is 'All For' Canada Becoming The 51st State If The U.S.

Bernie Sanders Is 'All For' Canada Becoming The 51st State If The U.S. Will Also Adopt Universal Healthcare.
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/bernie-sanders-canada-becoming-51st-233015099.html

"Sen. Bernie Sanders has sparked conversation on social media with a post tying universal health care to an idea floated by President-elect Donald Trump. According to The Associated Press (AP), at a dinner with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in November, Trump jokingly suggested that Canada become the 51st state of the United States of America.

In Sanders' post on X, he wrote:

"Trump has suggested that Canada become the 51st state in our union. Does that mean we can adopt the Canadian health care system and guarantee health care to all, lower the cost of prescription drugs and spend 50% less per capita on health care? I’m all for it.""
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How about asking the Canadians if this is something they want?

 

82 percent of Canadians would not like to become the 51st state, 13 percent said they would, and 5 percent did not know or chose not to answer. (Link: https://leger360.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Report-OMNI-CAN-16811-123-51st-state.pdf)

 

Based

 

Bernie was being facetious. This thread should be focused on Trump making the stupid proposal. I thought the Orange Kool-Aid Man was joking, but now that he's talking about taking over Greenland and the Panama Canal, I can't tell.

 

Trump couldn’t even find Greenland on a map.

 

Canada as the 51st state won't happen, in part because if it did somehow happen it would shift the Electoral College and Congress greatly to the left.

 

Does he know that most people in Greenland are not Caucasian?

 

After being told Trump said, "Oops, I didn't know that Greenland was a shithole country. Never mind."

 

This is a good riff going on here

 

Let me update and clarify, since the topic of the United States annexing Canada has rapidly shifted from a throwaway joke to a consequential hypothetical.

Trump’s 51st state rhetoric and his trade war together form a destabilization campaign against Canada.

Trump could move to annex Canada even though that Electoral College and Congress issue exists. Trump could manage that issue in any of several ways.

• He could bilk Canadians through a bait-and-switch in which Canada is annexed but ultimately not as a state, rather as a disenfranchised territory.
• He could bilk Canadians specifically by admitting Canada as a state but massively disenfranchising Canadian individuals.
• He could bilk Canadians by annexing Canada but disenfranchising American opposition in general through something like postponing the 2028 elections.
• Or he could bilk the Republican Party by annexing Canada and letting the chips fall where they may as he goes off to retirement.

 

There could be partitioning,
Some Provinces i.e States like BC, Ottawa, will join while Quebec will get independence?
Just speculating.

 

If Trump disregards the self-determination of the Rest of Canada, he is not going to conversely respect the self-determination of Quebec given that Quebec cuts a hole in the Rest of Canada.

Nor is Trump going to find allies among Quebec nationalists. There’s been a dramatic increase in Quebec in explicit pride in Canada. Many Quebec nationalists are accepting or positive about living within Canada as long as Quebec has robust self-governing power and the Francophone Quebec culture is vibrant and secure and perhaps predominant there.

And even harder secessionists recognize that unless and until they achieve clear majority support for secession, Canada offers a better deal than the US. Within Canada they have considerable autonomy, support for Francophone Quebec culture, and a legal system recognizing the future right of Quebec to secede if that clear majority support is achieved.

 

I'm only speculating, not proposing any changes.
It’s interesting to draw comparisons between different language policies. For instance, Ukraine passed a law in 2019 declaring Ukrainian as the official state language. This move created significant tension, particularly among Russian speakers and other minority groups in the country. However, in 2023, changes were made under pressure from the European Union.
I can’t help but think about the situation in Quebec, where forcing English on the Francophone population would likely have similar consequences. There would likely be strong protests, widespread resistance, and perhaps even renewed calls for independence.

 

Not even “perhaps even.” If English was actually forced on the Francophone population there would be fully widespread calls for independence, uniting both prior separatists and prior federalists (who would never have called for separation). Francophone Quebec is unanimous about the priority of sustaining their culture, they just disagree about some specifics including whether to pursue it within Canada or in a separate country.

And Francophones and Anglophones are not the only founding nations of Canada. There are also the Indigenous peoples, consisting of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis. All of these have nation-to-nation relationships with Canada, often governed through treaties between the indigenous nation and the Crown.

The US is not equipped to insert itself uninvited into these relationships with ultimate success.

Canadians have struggled. There were armed conflicts between a few Indigenous communities and general government authorities as recently as the 1990s, and between Quebec separatist extremists and general government authorities as recently as the 1970s.

Incidents were rare and the magnitude of unrest underlying those armed conflicts has been resolved since. But replacing these relationships with unsettled new relationships with an annexing American Empire would risk turning back the clock and worse. The empire would also be subject to unrest among the rest of the population.

 

I'm all for Canada joining the United States. IF each province and territory is admitted as a separate state. That would be close to 60 additional Electoral College votes, too. And you know what THAT would mean!